Fun-4-All may produce Sesame Street Action Figures

I would like to announce that Fun-4-All corp., will be producing a Sesame Street Action Figure line (due out March 2004)!!! They are going to be a little more stylized than Palisades' Muppets line, but they will have the same level of detail, articulation, and quality. Next year is the 35th anniversary of Sesame Street, so this line is coming out at the perfect time! We have plans to do all of the coolest characters down the line.... So please let me know who all of your favorite characters are! I definitely would appreciate all the comments and feedback I can get. I really want to make this toy line a success, and being a fellow collector, I think I can give you guys what you want.

So how many figures per wave will be coming out? How many waves a year? Will they debut at Toy Fair? Will they feature as many points of articulation as Palisades? Will they feature current and classic characters? Are there currently any retailers lined up? Will you be going after the adult/collector market of the child/toy market?

The first series will consist of: Oscar, Cookie, Bert, Ernie, and Super Grover.
The figures will be based on the "Retro" style artwork of Sesame Street (check out the "Hot Topic" Sesame products, and T-shirt artwork). They will be fully articulated (along the lines of the Palisades' figures), and around the same scale and price. They will have a flat (matte) brushed finish, giving the characters more texture and life. (cookie monster WON'T just be a chunk of blue plastic, he'll have many levels of blue fur)

Hey, you guys'll have some big shoes to fill after the whole Palisades thing (I grade all things I buy based on their figures now).

I have a question: When you say "stylized," what do ya mean?

Furthermore and hitherto (heh heh), I'd definitely buy a line of Sesame Street action figures, but I'd like to offer up some advice right now that I think you'll find the rest of the Muppets Fan Community will be in agreement with: Make the figures in scale to the Palisades figures. You'll definitely make the sales on these SS figures you desire!

Palisades has us spoiled on the details, so I expect that you'll be putting textures into the figures, including the clothing?

Are you also going to make the people characters with some resemblance to teh actual folks on the show? What about the 123 Sesame Street brownstone building? Any playsets?

I think that's all the worries and wants I have as a necessity to the SS figures line.

NOW:
Of course we'd want the following with their proper accessories:
-Big Bird (large scale toy) and his nest, including Radar the Bear and Mr. Hooper drawing.
-Ernie with Rubber Duckie and Drum Set, chair, tv
-Bert with Bernice the Pigeon, paper clip and/or bottle cap collection, chair
-Snuffy (could be done as a small plush) with some cabbages (don't forget he has a mom and sister, Baby Alice, too)
-Oscar the Grouch with his trash can, elephant snout--and making him be able to come out of his can and/or crouch down in the can would be awesome. The lid of the can should be able to be closed.
-Count Von Count with bats, cloth cape, and chair
-Cookie Monster with cookies, cookie jar (while jointed with a swivel neck, his mouth could dump cookies into his tummy when you put them in there?)
-Grover Monster (dunno what could come here)
-Waiter Grover (with table, spaghetti, menu, and towel over arm)
-Fat Blue with chair and items from the restaurant
-Super Grover, with magnetic helmet that closes over his eyes, cloth cape
-Elmo with Dorothy and some Elmo's World schtick (for lack of better ideas)
-Herry Monster with dumbbells and doll
-Prairie Dawn with piano
-Zoe with the Zoe mobile
-Guy Smiley with Beat the Clock clock
-The Amazing Mumford with magnetic hat, rabbit, magic hat stand
-Pink and Blue Martians, phone, book-book-book
-Twiddle Bugs (multi pack)

Are their going to be any playsets? Also, I saw the pictures of the first wave and they look great... I really love Oscar and Grover. But I have a few questions about the figures

-Can you tell us the approximate height of each of the five figures?
-Would it be possible to add texturing on the faces of Ernie and Bert to give them the puppet look?
-Is Ernie going to come with a Rubber Duckie?
-Is Bert going to come with Bernice the pigeon?

Whatever, the name of the dog you're thinking of is Barkley. His name was going to be Woof-Woof, but a bunch of the grown-ups voted and it became Barkley instead.

Ben, I wish I could see the pictures of the figures too, but then again, there's my blindness stopping me from enjoying the pics.
As for this figure line, I'm marginally skeptical and might not end up being satisfied until I find them in the stores next year, buy one, and start playing with it to see if it reaches the same level of loving care as Palisades' Muppets figures.
Got a wishlist of figures too, but I'll leave that for later.
Hope this helps and have a haunted day.

I would like to announce that Fun-4-All corp., will be producing a Sesame Street Action Figure line (due out March 2004)!!! They are going to be a little more stylized than Palisades' Muppets line, but they will have the same level of detail, articulation, and quality. Next year is the 35th anniversary of Sesame Street, so this line is coming out at the perfect time! We have plans to do all of the coolest characters down the line.... So please let me know who all of your favorite characters are! I definitely would appreciate all the comments and feedback I can get. I really want to make this toy line a success, and being a fellow collector, I think I can give you guys what you want.

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Well, I have some feedback based on the prototype pictures I have seen. To be honest I'm a little dissappointed. I have a problem with the following issues.

1. Articulation. If these pictures are any indication the articulation of these figures is lackings. The arms are swivel cuts instead of ball jointed shoulders. To me, that is a big dissappointment. Also the leg articulation is lacking. No knee joints or ankle swivels. No t crotch on Bert or Ernie. Oscar doesn't appear to have any articulation at all. I wouldn't really call these fully articulated.

2. Sculpts. The sculpts are pretty good actually. They all seem to be a little bit off, but not bad. The only one that I just about hate is Bert. It's all wrong. The puppet's eye brow can't even go into that position. Also, he is preposed and doesn't seem to be able to go into any natural poses. Again this is in part due to lack of certain articulation points. Cookie Monster having a cookie sculpted into his hand is dissappointing as well and having Oscar sculpted into his can with a scram sign sculpted into the can is a bit dissappointing as well. He seems to be more of a PVC figure than an action figure.

3. Colors. Cookie is a bit too light but other than that all the colors look ok to me.

4. Likeness compared to the puppets. Even though the sculpts looks good for 3 out of 4 of the figures, there is a lack of puppet likeness. All of the figures seem to be based on cartoon drawings of the characters instead of the actual puppets. I can see why this approach would be used for Cookie Monster, but I don't see why this approach was used to sculpt the others. Basically they are detailed figures based off of cartoons Sesame Street characters, but they don't have that puppet look. Maybe additional texture and less exagerated sculpts would fix that.

5. Accessories. None are shown and no mention of accessories has been made. I'm hoping that some fantastic and realistic accressories are made, especially if the price will be that of the palisades figures.

Sorry for the brutal honesty, but I'm hoping there is time to fix any if not all of this perceived problems.

Congratulations on the license. I wondered if these will be aimed at speciality collectors or more at mass retail ? Also will you be producing exclusives and chase figures ? Other than that, welcome to the forum, you definitely came to the right place for big Sesame/Muppets fans.